AN ANNUAL TRADITION
November 9, 2018
QUIT FOR LIFE
November 9, 2018
It was nearly a quarter century ago that I first lived and worked in Terrebonne Pariah, assigned to an education beat but interested mostly in die lives of commercial fishermen living in the bayou communities.
Because of this I chose to live among the bay on people rather than in Houma, and it is a decision that to this day I am proud of and shall never have cause to regret At the time no news reporters had lived an the bayous that anyone recalled. Then as now many of the journalists working for local publications preferred being close to their primary place of work.
But my primary desire then was to learn of the people who lived an these resilient, hurricane-scarred spits of land that descend from Houma, and you can’t learn an entire peoples’ way of life from the cheap seats.
From a news perspective, the decision paid off, Louisiana at the time was embroiled in a great controversy over the use of gill nets. Local media had done a good job of getting out the opinions of those who wanted a ban on the nets. But the fishing folks did not get their views presented quite so much.. Proximity to the people of the water led to mare balanced coverage. Balanced coverage led to trust. I made friends first on Bayou little Caillou, then Dulac, and then the other bayous as well, I got to travel with fishermen out to the places only they know, and learned some of what they were willing to share. Upon receiving advance notice I was able to meet up with a Water Patrol unit heading for a rescue, and got to Bee first-hand what is en-tailed for these brave and selfless officers.
One “day. while shopping in the Piggly Wiggty. I WAS accost-ad by an elder man in white hoots who informed me. after being assured that I was the reporter who lived on the bay-on. that the FBI had gone to his wife’s place of work in Chanvin and taken out a lot of boxes of papers. That knowledge, gained in the Pig’s canned-foods aisle, resulted in stories on a price-firing investigation done by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In years that followed I tried tastes of other places, always returning to the Bayou Region. North Carolina. Florida and California among them.
It has also be en about 15 years since I actually lived on Bayou little Cailloa. the place where my bayou education began, And so it was with great joy that I learned of a housing potential, not only on that bayou but in a home that was built by people who had become dose friends, in essence my bayou family.
And so that is where I sit as I write, eyes flickering between the screen and the picture window past which the trawler Brandon James just passed, on its way back from a shrimping trip. I still know the names of the captains of the beld marine radio. They remembered who I was, and I was glad.
Because of this job I get to speak with many people, in Houma, Thibodaux, and on all the bayous. And I will still go wherever a good story demands. But I also have a warm feeling inside, the feeling that comes unmistakably from knowing that one is truly home.
